Business transactions, that is, the buying and selling of goods and services, have a long history characterized by continuing efforts and developments to facilitate the presentation of goods and services, or at least the knowledge of goods and services, to prospective buyers and the subsequent transfer of goods or services to the buyers and a corresponding transfer of compensation to the seller. The history of such business transactions has been marked by the use of increasing abstractions to represent goods, services and monetary compensation and increasing distance between the seller and the buyer. For example, the first business transactions were by the direct barter of goods or services, and were soon replaced by the trading of goods or services for money, which was an abstraction representing bartered goods and facilitated business dealings as being more flexible and more easily transportable than bartered goods. At about the same time, stores and similar facilities where goods were stocked in anticipation of sales were established, thereby making the goods more readily available to potential buyers, including impulse shoppers. The establishment of banking systems, which soon became international in scope and began to use letters of credit and other abstract representations of money, allowed long distance business transactions without the need for actual physical transfer of money or goods. The more recent development of mass media advertising, including catalogues, and of credit cards, mail systems, telephone systems and networked banking systems have still further facilitated the presentation of goods and services to prospective buyers and the subsequent transfer of goods or services to the buyers and a corresponding transfer of compensation to the seller, frequently without the buyer and the seller having any form of direct contact.
The most recent development in business has been the advent of electronic commerce, which is the execution of business transactions, that is, the presentation of goods or services to a prospective buyer and the subsequent arrangement to transfer goods or services to the buyer and compensation to the seller, over a communications network, such as the Internet or the World Wide Web (WWW) implemented through the Internet. Possible electronic commerce may include, for example, transactions within enterprises or between an enterprise and a customer, a supplier, a bank or organizations such as the Securities and Exchange Commission or the stock market, the movement of money or credits and debts, or representations thereof, the transfer of information, and home shopping and financial transactions of all forms, and education and entertainment.
It is estimated that by the year 2000 A.D. the total value of the sale of goods and services through the Internet will be on the order of 4.5 to 6 billion dollars and, for this reason, a primary goal and need of the business community is to reduce the frictions and losses of doing business through the Internet. Examples of such may include inefficient market or organization structures, inefficient means for presenting available goods and services to potential customers, inefficient flow of information, that is, information about goods, orders for goods and services and payment for goods and services, and the number and complexity of the steps which must be executed in order to carry out a transaction. All of these factors inhibit interaction and communication between sellers and buyers and thereby the completion of business transactions.
It is apparent that the resolution of certain of these problems, such as inefficient business organizational structures, must generally be solved by the businesses themselves while others, such as the speed and reliability of communication over the Internet or WWW, will be addressed largely by improvements in the basic technology that is used to implement the Internet and the systems communicating through the Internet. Others, however, are a matter of the manner in which business transactions are carried out through the Internet.
For example, each transaction on the Internet presently requires that the buyer transmit a copy of a credit card or debit card number to the selling business where that number is generally stored in those portions of the seller's system that are involved in day to day transactions, which are generally and permanently accessible through the Internet. As such, and although the seller's systems are generally provided with extensive security mechanisms, the security mechanisms and customer information, such as credit and debit card numbers, are vulnerable to any outside party with the knowledge and skills to breach the security mechanisms. As a consequence, business transactions on the Internet are presently considered, in many respects, to be lacking the security necessary for extensive or large transactions.
Another problem with business transactions through the Internet, which are generally conducted through the WWW, which uses visually based Web pages, is that it is difficult to construct and update Web pages, thus inhibiting the presentation of new goods or services, or updates in goods or services or the presentation of special or temporary offers.
In addition, it is often difficult for a seller to construct a Web page that presents all of the information that a buyer might need to make a decision of whether to purchase certain goods or services, so that Web pages offering goods or services either tend to be limited to standard packaged goods, such as books or music CDs, or to require that the prospective buyer already have extensive knowledge of the offered goods or services. In the alternative, Web pages offering more complex goods or services, or goods or services where many informed choices must be made, are so complex and often multi-paged, that the prospective buyer is often frustrated.
Further, and in a related problem arising from the same causes, sellers' Web pages are often different from one another as regards layout and the type of information presented and the form in which the information is presented, even for similar goods and services, and the information and presentation of information on a page often conflicts with other pages by the same seller. As such, a prospective buyer must generally go through an entirely new learning experience with each sellers' pages, and is often confused due to differences from, and misleading similarities with, other sellers' Web pages.
Still further problems arise from the number and complexity of operations and steps that a prospective buyer must execute in order to complete a transaction on the Internet, such as ordering goods from a seller. For example, a buyer is generally required to enter a plenitude of information into a form, which is generally different from seller to seller, for each and every transaction wherein that information may include items such as the buyer's name, address, goods shipping address, credit or debit card number, one or more information items, such as stock numbers, for each item to be purchased, and so on. Not only is this manner of executing a transaction prone to errors, it is slow, tedious, tiring and boring and, as a result, tends to make transactions slow and to inhibit a buyer from purchasing the goods or services. In addition, and although it is not necessarily a negative aspect of placing an order for some buyers, it operates against the interests and selling practices of many sellers by inhibiting impulse purchases.
The present invention provides a solution to these and other problems of the prior art.